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History Facts They Didn’t Teach You At School

4% of the Normandy beaches is made up of shrapnel from the D-Day Landings.​



More than 5,000 tons of bombs were dropped by the Allies on the Axis powers as part of the prelude to the Normandy landings.

Scientists have studied the sand on the beaches of Normandy and they’ve found microscopic bits of smoothed down shrapnel from the landings.

They estimate that, within 150 years, the beach will have fully lost any remaining shrapnel to rust and erosion.
 

The saying “fly off the handle” originates from the 1800s.​


It’s a saying that refers to cheap axe-heads flying off their handles when swung backwards before a chop.
 

“Fox Tossing” was once a popular sport.​


Popular with Europe’s aristocracy during the 17th and 18th century, fox tossing would involve a person – or a couple – throwing a fox as far and as high as they could!
 

Turkeys were once worshiped as Gods.​



The Mayan people believed turkeys were the vessels of the Gods, and honored them with worship.

They were even domesticated to have roles in religious rites!
 

Captain Morgan was a real guy.​


He was also a real captain, too!

The face of the much-loved rum brand was a Welsh privateer who fought against the Spanish alongside the English in the Caribbean.

His full name was Sir Henry Morgan, and was knighted by King Charles II.

Captain Morgan died in 1688 in Jamaica as a very wealthy man.
 

Genghis Khan was tolerant of all religions.​


Back then, the world was a very intolerant place. More often than not, conquering warlords and emperors weren’t open to religions other than their own.

Genghis Khan was very different from other conquerors though in many different ways.

One was his interest in learning philosophical and moral lessons from other religions.

Despite being a Tengrist, he often consulted with Buddhist monks, Muslims, Christian missionaries, and Taoist monks.
 

Thomas Edison didn’t invent most of the stuff he patented.​


It’s fair to say that Edison was one of the world’s most notorious intellectual property thieves.

Of the 1,093 things he smashed a patent on, he stole near enough most of them off real geniuses like Nikola Tesla, Wilhelm Rontgen and Joseph Swan – the latter of whom originally invented the lightbulb!
 

Albert Einstein turned down the presidency of Israel.​


Einstein wasn’t a citizen of Israel. However he was Jewish. The German-born physicist was offered the post, but turned it down in 1952, saying:

“I am deeply moved by the offer from our State of Israel, and at once saddened and ashamed that I cannot accept it. All my life I have dealt with objective matters, hence I lack both the natural aptitude and the experience to deal properly with people and to exercise official functions.”

If you’re enjoying these history facts so far, you may also like these facts about Albert Einstein.
 

Roman Emperor Caligula made one of his favorite horses a senator.​


If you didn’t know anything about Caligula, then this is a pretty good way to get the impression.

He was infamous for his brutality and madness. Caligula fed criminals to animals and had conversations with the moon.

He loved his horse – called Incitatus – so much that he gave him a marble stall, an ivory manger, a jeweled collar and even a house!

Caligula made his horse a senator and allegedly planned to make him Consul before his assassination.
 

Pope Gregory IX declared war on cats.​


He declared cats to be agents of devil worshippers. Not all cats though, it was black moggies in particular.

The Pope declared that they should be exterminated.
 

The Leaning Tower of Pisa was never straight.​


Known worldwide for its four degrees lean, this freestanding bell tower was constructed in the 12th century.

When construction on the second story started, due to the unstable ground it was built on, the tower started to lean.

After this, the lean only increased as the construction process went on, and it went on to become more iconic than the tower itself!
 

During the Great Depression, people made clothes out of food sacks.​


People used flour bags, potato sacks, anything made out of burlap really.

Because of this, food distributors started to make their sacks more colorful to help people remain a little bit fashionable.
 

Lord Byron kept a bear in his college dorm.​


The famous Romantic-period poet was peeved when he found out that Trinity College, Cambridge, didn’t allow dogs on campus.

So, to rebel against the man’s draconian rules he decided to bring a tame bear with him to campus.

Whilst the college’s authorities tried to protest, he won his case as the rules didn’t explicitly state you couldn’t bring a bear to campus.

To parade his victory and gloat to the powers that be, Byron often took his bear for walks around campus on a lead!
 

Iceland has the world’s oldest parliament in history.​



Called the Althing, it was established in 930 and has stayed as the acting parliament of Iceland since then.
 

Since the end of WWI, over 1,000 people have died from leftover unexploded bombs.​


During the Great War, an estimated 200 pounds of explosives was fired per square foot of territory on the Western front.

However, not all of these shells exploded.

Every year since the end of the war something called an “iron harvest” takes place.

This is the annual “harvest” or unearthing of unexploded WWI bombs. As well as grenades, artillery shells, and other explosives which occurs mainly during the spring planting and autumn harvest in the fields that were once the Great War’s arena.

Since 1919, over 1,000 civilians and ordnance collectors have died from explosions caused by these in France and Belgium.
 

46 BC was 445 days long and is the longest year in human history.​


Nicknamed the annus confusionis, or “year of confusion”, this year had two extra leap months inserted by Julius Caesar.

This was in order to make his newly-formed Julian Calendar match up with the seasonal year.

This calendar is a variation of which is still used in most places across the world today.
 

100 million years ago, the Sahara Desert was inhabited by galloping crocodiles.​


Back then, the Sahara Desert was a lush plain full of life – and also full of predators.

In 2009, fossil hunters found the remains of crocodiles.

These remains had large land-going legs that were capable of galloping across the land at breakneck speeds.

They could easily snap up unlucky dinosaurs in their jaws!
 

During the Victorian period, it was normal to photograph relatives after they died.​


People would dress their newly-deceased relatives in their best clothing, and then put them in lifelike poses and photograph them.

They did this to preserve one last image of their dead loved one in a strange form of commemoration.
 

One man survived both the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and then later Nagasaki.​


Tsutomu Yamaguchi was a 29-year-old Naval Engineer on a three-month business trip to Hiroshima. On August the 6th 1945, the Enola Gay dropped its atomic payload on the city.

Yamaguchi was less than 2 miles from ground zero and was thrown into a potato patch.

He survived the blast and was able to make a perilous journey through the devastated city to the railway station.

Here, on August the 7th, he boarded a train on an overnight ride to his hometown of Nagasaki.

On the morning of August 9th, he was with some colleagues in an office building when another boom split the sound barrier. A flash of white light filled the sky.

Yamaguchi emerged from the wreckage with only minor injuries on top of his current injuries. He had survived two nuclear blasts in two days.
 
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The shortest war in history lasted 38 minutes.​


Fought between Britain and Zanzibar, and known as the Anglo-Zanzibar War, this war occurred on August the 27th, 1896.

It was all over the ascension of the next Sultan in Zanzibar and resulted in a British victory.
 

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